Pressers and scrums: Branch talks suspension, Campbell on Vikings' d-line and McCarthy, and Hutchinson praises pass-rush complements

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Allen Park — Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell, assistant head coach and receivers coach Scottie Montgomery, safeties coach Jim O’Neil, quarterback Jared Goff, safety Brian Branch and defensive end Aidan Hutchinson met with the media on Tuesday.

Here are the highlights from those conversations.

Separating contenders and pretenders

This is where the cream rises.

That was Campbell’s message to the team coming out of the bye when he quickly highlighted where his team stood in the crowded NFC standings.

“I mentioned to the team yesterday, I just kind of put up where everything is stacking in the NFC right now,” Campbell said. “It’s very competitive, especially at this point in the season for one conference. But all I stated was, ‘Hey, this is where we’re at, this is where these teams are at, and this thing’s about to shake out within the month of November.’

“You’re going to start seeing the risers and fallers, and a lot of these teams are playing each other,” Campbell continued. “We’re one of them. So, it really is just handle your business, man. And the bottom line is, find a way to win your division. We’ve got Minnesota coming in here, that’s number one, and then you worry about the next one after that.”

There are currently six teams with two or fewer losses at the top of the NFC, which is led by the Green Bay Packers, who hold a 5-1-1 record after coming back to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers last Sunday night.

If the playoffs started today, Detroit would be the top Wild Card team in the conference and would travel to Seattle, which is a win short of the other division leaders by virtue of already having its bye week.

Getting more out of Jamo

Another week, another round of questions about the inconsistent usage of Jameson Williams, who was held without a reception on two targets in the team’s Week 7 victory over Tampa Bay.

Montgomery was asked if the team needed to find a middle ground between the boom and bust performances of Williams this season.

“No middle ground, only the ceiling,” Montgomery said. “We’ve got to get to the ceiling. “It’s one of those situations where it’s one of the things that I study, where he is in the progression, what happens when he is first, second, third in progression. And it’s kind of been all over the place. Either the progression started and he’s open behind the first progression, or he’s second progression and we don’t quite connect. Or we do everything right, o-line, everything is right, and we don’t make a play down the field.”

Where Montgomery agrees with the outside opinion is that the Lions need to find ways to get the speedy receiver more opportunities, week to week. How does that happen? Well, Montgomery echoed comments made by Campbell a day earlier, about needing to convert on third downs and extend more drives.

Regarding the memes Williams posted on social media following the Buccaneers game, which some read as frustration with his role and/or production, Montgomery said he hasn’t seen any dip in Williams’ effort or attitude. But even if he hasn’t expressed frustration in the building, Montgomery said it would be a natural response from a playmaker lacking production.

“If he wasn’t a little bit ornery right now, it would just signal complacency to me,” Montgomery said. “I don’t think he hasn’t shown anything in the building or anything on the sideline. …I do think that speaks to his maturity, but he also understands that he is working and doing things the right way.”

Montgomery also said Williams showed his maturity by not reacting to an offensive pass interference call that took away his only grab against the Buccaneers.

“I thought he was going to go crazy on the penalty in the game, where it was a great back-shoulder catch,” Montgomery said, biting his tongue before criticizing the call. “…He’s probably a lot more mature than me in some of those situations, especially when you’ve been coached to do something a certain way, and then you have the opportunity to do it in the exact, detailed way, and it doesn’t go the way that you would like it to go.

New defensive challenge from the Vikings

Among the biggest changes for the Vikings from last season, outside the quarterback position, is the overhauled interior of the team’s defensive line. Jonathan Bullard and Harrison Phillips are gone. They’ve been replaced by accomplished veterans Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave, who were each lured to Minnesota by lucrative contracts in free agency.

I asked Campbell how the changes impact what the Vikings are able to do, schematically, under aggressive defensive coordinator Brian Flores.

“Here’s what I’d say, they’re looking for more disruption, more of a penetrating style defense up front,” Campbell said. “And you can feel some of that.”

The Vikings once again lead the NFL in blitz rate, a trademark of Flores’ aggression. They’re sending an extra attacker on 42.0% of pass plays. In terms of pressure, they’re affecting the quarterback on 29.7% of pass plays, up from 25.3% a year ago.

Another factor in that equation is the breakout performance of versatile defensive lineman Jalen Redmond, who is in his second season with the team following a brief stint in the UFL. After logging just six QB pressures last season, he has 21 this year.

“I think Redmond’s an outstanding player,” Campbell said. “I really do, man. I think that guy is disruptive, I think he plays the run, I think he gets an edge in the pass game.”

Goff’s bye-week evaluation

Goff likes several things about the way he’s played through seven games. He’s pleased with how he’s seeing things develop, allowing him to get the ball out of his hands quickly and avoid sacks. And he has no complaints about his career-best 74.9 completion percentage, which is second in the league behind New England’s Drake Maye.

Where would Goff like to be better? Taking calculated risks.

“I think there are some areas of aggressiveness where I can be a little more aggressive,” Goff said. “I say that, and then I’ll make a poor decision and say I need not be so aggressive in certain situations. Yeah, it’s a double-edged sword there. At the same time, if I’m getting the ball in our guys’ hands underneath, regardless, it doesn’t really matter.”

If Goff can maintain his completion percentage — and Maye fades — the Lions QB has a chance of setting the NFL’s single-season record for the stat, held by future Hall of Famer Drew Brees. The retired Saints quarterback completed 74.4% of his passes in 2018.

Not surprisingly, that’s the furthest thing from Goff’s mind.

“I won’t think about that,” Goff said. “It’s so dang hard, every week, to play well and win games. Yeah, I’ve been able to keep a pretty good percentage there, but that’s a product of me being kept upright, our guys getting open, and me being pretty accurate with it. Want to try to continue that and see how it goes.”

Acing judgement

It couldn’t have been an easy week for safeties coach Jim O’Neil ahead of the bye, having to prepare his group without star starters Brian Branch and Kerby Joseph.

Regardless, his group emphatically answered the call in the victory over Tampa Bay, despite having almost no collective snaps in the regular season for the Lions.

O’Neil admitted he’d never experienced a game quite like it, down four starters in the secondary, while also acknowledging none of the coaches or players blinked in the face of the adversity.

“One of the first lessons I learned from Rex Ryan when I was a younger assistant coach was he told me, ‘You’re not going to be evaluated by your starters. You’re going to be evaluated by how your backups play.’ That’s always kind of stuck in my head.

“And I think our entire coaching staff does an unbelievable job coaching everybody on the roster,” O’Neil said. “So when we get in those situations — and just in the year and a half that I’ve been here, especially on defense, we’ve been decimated at every level of the defense — guys have stepped up and gone in and played at a high level.”

With Thomas Harper, one of the two players stepping into a starting role, O’Neil said it offered an important opportunity to evaluate the August waiver claim beyond what he had shown on the practice field.

“Some boxes that were empty, we needed to get checked to find out about him as a player,” O’Neil said. “I thought he did that.”

Impressed by young QB

At the quarterback position, the Vikings let Sam Darnold walk in free agency after last season’s breakout, turning the offense over to 2024 first-round pick J.J. McCarthy.

The former Michigan quarterback missed his rookie season with a knee injury, and more recently, he was sidelined for the past five games by an ankle concern. However, he’s expected back this Sunday.

Campbell said the team didn’t meet with McCarthy when he was coming out of college, one, because they weren’t in the market for a quarterback, and two, because the team knew he’d be long gone before they were on the clock in the first round. Still, the coach did the standard pre-draft work on the passer and came away impressed.

“He’s a winner. That’s number one,” Campbell said. “The guy has won a ton of games. And he has played a pro-style offense with (Jim) Harbaugh at Michigan. I think those are two things that you don’t always find. …That, and I mentioned his athleticism. He’s mobile, he’s got a big arm, he’s a good decision maker. He’s like any other young quarterback. The more reps he gets, the better he’s going to get.”

Even in the two games McCarthy has played this season, Campbell was impressed by the youngster’s poise.

“You watch Chicago and what he did,” Campbell said. “Had it a little bit rough there early, throws the pick, and then all of a sudden, he comes rushing back, and you just see the poise and the confidence and his ability to overcome that and really lead them to a win. That’s impressive for a young guy. That kind of tells me all I need to know.”

Pass rush quieting critics

For all the consternation about Detroit’s pass rush entering this season, the team has found a way to regularly get to the quarterback through seven games, ranking third in the NFL with 3.3 sacks per game.

A big part of that has been the emergence of Al-Quadin Muhammad after the veteran flashed as an injury replacement a year ago.

“Quan (Muhammad) has definitely added this layer of pass rush that probably not many people thought was going to be the case this year,” Hutchinson said. “Not anything against Quan, but it was going to be me and Marcus (Davenport), and then Marcus going down, Quan got this unbelievable opportunity, and he’s made the most of it.

“That’s a credit to him and his mindset and how he works, and his ability, too,” Hutchinson said. “I mean, he’s really putting so much good stuff on tape, and that’s a credit to him. I’m happy for him, and I hope this serves him well. I hope he continues to produce so he can get paid next year and use this to really put a great stamp on his career.”

Even with his success in 2024, Muhammad surprisingly didn’t find a bigger market for his services. He returned to the Lions on a one-year deal for $1.4 million. With his improvements this year, he’s in line for a nice raise next offseason.

Also supercharging Detroit’s rush has been the return of defensive tackle Alim McNeill. Hutchinson acknowledged how impressive McNeill was in his debut.

“It was so electric being out there with him and feeling his pressure,” Hutchinson said. “That kind of bleeds over to when you have multiple guys on a defensive line that are getting pressure. It makes your defense so much more dynamic, and he was putting a lot of good stuff on tape, especially for a guy that hadn’t played football for however long.”

With McNeill performing the way he did against the Buccaneers, Hutchinson anticipates it should create more one-on-one rush opportunities on the edges.

“I think because of the Tampa outcome, because of how we played on defense, I don’t think that’s the recipe to beat our defense,” Hutchinson said. “I think that (will be) discouraging for people when they watch that tape to kind of emulate that.”

Managing injured reserve

Sione Vaki returned to practice this week after a five-week, four-game absence. It begs the question: Why didn’t the Lions put the second-year running back on injured reserve to open up a roster spot?

Campbell explained the nuances of those borderline decisions.

“That’s tough,” Campbell said. “That’s something that we go through all the time, and that’s what (GM) Brad (Holmes)’s is constantly — the amount of shuffling and thinking and moving that goes into it to try to help yourself and balance your roster as much as possible, by where you’re at, but also where you could be in a week, two weeks, three weeks. There’s nothing easy about it.

“I think Brad has done a hell of a job,” Campbell said. “We talk about it all the time. Look, if you’re not in an immediate pinch and you think this is a four- or five-week deal, maybe we hold onto them and we don’t IR them, if we can.”

Campbell noted that teams being limited to returning eight players from injured reserve during the regular season also enters the equation. He also stated there are times when a player is on the cusp of being cleared, and the team is blessed with enough depth to give them an extra week to rehab and heal, to further ensure the injury is less likely to be aggravated once they return.

“It doesn’t always work that way, but we do the best we can with it,” Campbell said.

Branch apologizes, vows to cage aggression

Fresh off his one-game suspension for slapping Chiefs receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster after the teams’ Week 6 game, Brian Branch met with the media on Tuesday.

Instead of recapping this one, here’s the full transcript:

Q: How difficult was last week?

Branch: “It was very difficult, just (not) being out there with my guys, my brothers. I wasn’t able to help contribute to a win, but I’m glad we got the W.”

Q: Where’d you watch the game at?

Branch: “Honestly, I didn’t even watch the game, for real. I couldn’t.”

Q: What did you think about the support from your teammates, wearing your jersey?

Branch: “I love them. I think they know this, where I stand with them, as far as like, I’d die out there for them boys. And I play as hard as I can to just help us, just do what I gotta do to help them, man. You know, I’ll scratch and claw. I go to war with them, pretty much.”

Q: Why couldn’t you watch the game?

Branch: “Watching them would make me, like, just miss being out there. And that’s something that’s hard that I didn’t want. I would be (too) eager to get out there.”

Q: How motivated are you to get back out there this week?

Branch: “Oh, a lot of motivation. I feel like it’s another chip on my shoulder that they just added. I also want to apologize for that, what I did. That’s something I don’t condone. It’ll never happen again, but it definitely add another chip to my shoulder.”

Q: Do you think it merited a suspension?

Branch: “Uh (laughing). I dealt with the consequence they gave me. I’m just seem to move forward now.”

Q: How do you balance that fiery nature that you have on the field with taming it, as well?

Branch: “Yes, sir. I feel like just not playing with too much emotions. I feel like I get caught playing with too much emotions and that brings that. And, now, I still play with the fire, but just in between the whistle. Now, shoot, we’re going to the playoff run, so ain’t none of that.”

Q: How do you toe that line better? How do you hold that emotion back?

Branch: “Honestly, in a way, you don’t. Just got to be smarter in certain situations. Coach tells me all the time, they’re going to pick at me during the play, or just trying to get me to get out of my shell and to retaliate. He said, ‘Still play with the fire, just learn how to not retaliate when they do that, and just play between the whistle.”

Q: Do you work with a counselor on that?

Branch: “Yes. Where I take my dog for boarding, his name is Mr. Preacher, and he’s helped me a long way. I (will) actually get baptized this Wednesday.”

Q: How much did it mean for your coaches to back your character this past week?

Branch: “It means a lot. I feel like I shot our team in the foot with what I did, and for them to have my back, I love them for that. Like I said, I’d go to war for them any day of the week. That’s going to be like that until it’s all over.”

Q: What should fans expect from you this week?

Branch: “Just a relentless effort and aggression.

Q: When did you find out your teammates were wearing your jersey?

Branch: “I saw the text Terrion put in the group chat, I think on Friday. So when he said that, I was like, ‘OK, man!’ They didn’t have to do that, but I love them, man. Those are my brothers.

Q: What did you think of the performance of Thomas Harper and Erick Hallett?

Branch: “All those guys, the whole secondary, honestly, they played together. They played better than how we (the starters) played, to me, all year. So I was too eager to get back out.”

Q: Tell us more about getting baptized.

Branch: “Honestly, I feel like I just turned over a new leaf. I feel like I need to be saved by God, just going through a time like that. Yeah, it’s a new leaf.”

Q: “Did the suspension prompt you to want to do that?

Branch: “No, that’s something I’ve wanted to do, but it was perfect timing anyway.

Q: And Mr. Preacher, was he the one who will baptize you?

Branch: “Yes.”